Tag: Go West

Go West Chapter 5~Aldon

Go West Serial 5

Go West

by

DiVoran Lites

Chapter Five

Aldon

“Ah yes, my new compagno.” Lia stepped into the hallway and embraced Miss Morgan saying, “Welcome, we will have wonderful time together.” Aldon had learned that compagno meant companion, so apparently Signora had big plans for using the newly hired Chicagoan. Molly, however, meant to use her for a kitchen maid. In all this scrambling, Aldon hoped there would be time for him to teach her to ride.

“Giovanni is asleeping in his room, but won’t you come in?” The Signora was always hungry for company. Aldon couldn’t blame her; the ranch was a good piece from town. But Aldon was concerned about the city gal’s need for rest.

“Come on, we gotta get movin’.” He tugged on her elbow, but she jerked her arm out of his hand and gave him a dirty look. Even so, she went along the corridor with him.
*
“Home sweet home,” He flung open the door to the room he’d slept in most of his life. The plank floor was clean, and the dresser that his grandfather had fashioned with cherry wood, glowed with polish. His old quilt lay across the foot of the bed. He now preferred to sleep under the thick, woolen army blanket he’d been allowed to bring home after his service in the Great War.

“If you keep going in the same direction we were headed, you’ll come to the bathroom,” he told her standing aside so she could enter the room.

“Thank you for everything.” Miss Morgan’s voice was cool and distant. He wondered what kind of a savage he appeared to her, manhandling her as he just had. He vowed to do better from here on out.

“If you can wait a few minutes, I’ll fetch your trunk.” He left then but sensed her slipping from the room and down the hall to the new bathroom with its long, German-made bathtub and flush toilet.
*
When he returned with the trunk, she was lying across the bed still fully dressed, but now sound asleep. She didn’t stir when he removed her boots, rotated her by her feet until her head was on the pillow, and covered her with the quilt.

In the barn, he checked the tires on the Touring car for air, put them on the car, jacked it off the blocks, and lowered the car to the ground. He made sure of the oil level, then after filtering the gasoline, he funneled it into the tank. Tomorrow would be the automobile’s first time out since autumn, and he was looking forward to getting behind the wheel. Mechanical things always worked for him. But he didn’t know much about females. Ma, fed the boys, kept them clean, and tried to make gentlemen of them, and one of the things she insisted upon was that they knew how to treat a lady. Another was that they never kept company with the other kind of woman. She told them what to look out for so that they didn’t fall into a lifetime of having their hearts broken.

He grabbed the clean clothes Molly had laid out for him in the barn, picked up his towel and soap, and headed for the lake in the light of the stars and the crescent moon. The lake was one-of-a-kind as far as he knew. Of course, he hadn’t seen every lake in the world, but this one had a hot spring at one end, and a place where the creek entered by waterfall at the other. In winter, they plunged into the perfect warm water to bathe and in summer; they cooled off in the cold. What he liked was that both had shallow parts and deep parts. What he didn’t like was the place in the middle where the water stayed tepid. He’d take hot or cold any day, but not the wishy-washy stuff in between.

He got out, dried off, and dressed, appreciating the clean clothes. Molly said she didn’t mind washing for him because she admired him for keeping clean. He mentally thanked his mother, Nancy, who had trained him that way. He did wish Nancy would come on home where she belonged. He didn’t get why she thought her sister Gertrude needed her more that he and Molly did. She’s the best mother anyone ever had, he thought. She helped us stay morally clean by having us read the Bible to her every night before bed. She talked things over with us so that we understood how to work, how to save our money, and how to get along with other people. Dad taught us all about ranching. He never spared the rod where it might be needed for discipline, and I’m thankful for that, too.

He lay down on the cot in the loft alcove and pulled the heavy army blanket up to his chest. As soon as he let his body relax, his mind got to work again. He was back in his BeBe flying over France and into Germany not knowing whether he would die or return home a cripple. He rolled over and deliberately turned his mind to the young woman he’d just met. I hope she and I will be good friends, he thought. I’ll see her again tomorrow. And maybe sometimes we can talk. I’ll plant more wildflowers in the garden, she’ll probably like those. He had many good things to think about: the songs he’d play on his mandolin tomorrow at church, the young woman, and driving the Ford Touring car to church tomorrow.

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Go West Chapter One~Ellie

Chapter One The RR Station copyGo West

By DiVoran Lites

Chapter One

Ellie

Elizabeth Morgan, riding backward, looked out the train window at a sign that said, Clifton. It was here she hoped to find a plan and purpose for her life. As she stood, she studied the Victorian-style train station with several men milling on the boardwalk. They wore ragged clothes, battered hats, and down-at-the-heel boots. For a moment, she tried to imagine them dressed in well-fitting woolen suits with homburgs or fedoras on their heads. Then shaking her head, she gave it up. All the imagining in the world would not make this burg into downtown Chicago, and that was fine with her. She needed a new life, maybe she’d find it here.

Smoothing kiss curls over each cheek, she straightened her narrow-brimmed cloche. As she reached toward the shelf for her tapestry carpet bag, an arm went over her head and carefully lifted it down. She looked up at a tall man with silver-blond hair and gray eyes that were the kind that turned blue on a sunny day. He now held the carpetbag in one hand and a deep brown Boss of the Prairie Stetson in the other. She didn’t know yet who he was, but she knew from working in her grandparents’ department store back home, that he had good taste in hats. His frayed khaki shirt, however, looked as if it were part of a uniform from the Great War.

“Name’s Aldon Leitzinger, Miss Morgan. The conductor told me you were in this car.” Warmth radiated from his clean-smelling body before he stepped into the aisle and started moving away. Ellie hurried to throw her camel hair cape over her arm and follow.

“Are you from Spruce Creek Ranch?” she asked. He paused to toss an answer over his shoulder.

“Yes, ma’am. I’m foreman there.” He moved on. When he got to the exit, he jumped two feet down onto the boardwalk and turned to help her. She hesitated and before she could discern his intention he jammed the hat on his head and snaked an arm around her to lift her down and deposit her on the boardwalk. Her Russian boots wobbled on the uneven platform.

“Whoa there.” He steadied her. “Don’t worry, you’ll soon get used to the altitude.” He put a hand under her elbow, but she shook him off.

“It’s not the altitude. I wasn’t ready; that’s all.” She had meant to be courteous, but she found herself irritated by this lanky, confident cowboy.

“You’re as scrappy as a banty hen, aren’t you?” He grinned.

“What is the altitude here, anyway?” she asked to cover her outrage at his arrogance.

“Right here we’re over eight thousand feet above sea-level.” He started walking toward the station house and she stepped quickly over the uneven boards trying to keep up. He pointed at a range of mountains in the distance. “The ranch is at ten-thousand feet and some of those peaks go up to fourteen thousand. What’s the altitude in Chicago?”

So he knew not only her name, but where she had come from. Maybe as foreman he’d read her resume. No harm in that. She knew she’d been hired not for the words on a slip of paper, but mainly because of Granddad’s love of the West.

“Five hundred eighty-six feet.” Fortunately, Granddad had read that statistic to her from the morning paper five days ago before she left their home in Chicago.

“Did you bring any more baggage?” He stopped at a wooden bench outside the office and motioned for her to sit down.

“A trunk,” she said.

“Okay, I’ll be a minute.” Setting down the carpetbag and her violin, he strode off toward the last cars on the train. She was deep in thought when he returned with her Douglas Vulcanized Wardrobe Trunk on his shoulder. He picked up the carpetbag and was off again.

“Those mountains are beautiful,” Ellie said as they stepped onto the sidewalk that lined one side of the only block of Main Street.

“That’s the Sangre de Cristo range.” His body exuded the same kind of nonchalant confidence she had noted in Cooper Randolph, her favorite western movie star. Before she left home, Granddad had taken her to see him in “The End of the Trail,” at the converted Palace Theater, which only a few years ago had been dedicated to burlesque.

“The name means blood of Christ. You see how the snow turns reddish as the sun goes down?” I heard pride and tenderness in his voice. Are you hungry?”

“Yes. I missed lunch in Pueblo because the whistle blew before we passengers got our food. I paid in advance, too.” That still rankled. She believed in fairness in business.

“The springboard’s at the livery here on Main Street. We’ll be at the ranch in half an hour. Molly can give you some supper—and she won’t make you pay first, either.”

The broad gravel street still held faux-front buildings even though it was already 1924. To Ellie, the town looked old and shabby. Several farm type wagons with their teams of horses waiting patiently were lined up on one side of the wide street. On the other side, she saw turn of the century Model A and Model T Fords angled toward the buildings.

Mr. Leitzinger carried her trunk into a livery stable full of warm animal smells and dust motes. A dappled gray horse thrust its long nose over a stall door and Ellie stepped back a pace.

“Do you ride?” Mr. Leitzinger inquired.

“Do I have to?”

“Most ranch hands do ride. Besides, horses are mighty fine creatures once you get to know them.” He opened the half-door of the stall and pulled the big horse out by the rope halter. “Pardon me for saying so, ma’am, but you don’t look much like a ranch hand.”

“Oh, I can do anything I set my mind to.” She said eyeing the horse warily. “Besides, I’m supposed to help the housekeeper and act as lady’s maid to the woman of the house.”

“Evenin’, Aldon,” A man wearing suspenders over a long-sleeved undershirt came out of the livery office. “Who’s this purty lady?”

“Miss Elizabeth Morgan.” Mr. Leitzinger put extra emphasis on the Miss. “She’s our new ranch hand.”

Ellie choked and started coughing. Those words reminded her that if she were to fail here, she’d report straight back to Grandmother to work in the department store beauty salon again. Once there, she’d give haircuts and machine waves until such time as Grandmother could find the proper husband for her. He would be a man so politically adept that he would end up in the governor’s mansion with Ellie as wife and chatelaine.