The riders watched as Lou said good-bye to her brother and sister, each slowly coming to terms with the fact that the petite rider was really a girl. Jimmy hadn’t been able to take his eyes off of her every since he’d heard her admission at Boggs’. Cody was still coming up with questions he wanted to ask her. Kid was watching Lou and wanting to help her anyway he could. He understood her a little better now. Buck and Ike were the only two that didn’t seem to care either way. They were too busy talking and fooling around with some of the boys to pay attention to Lou.
Lou took the doll that Teresa was holding and lovingly smoothed back her hair before handing it back saying, “Take care of her for me until I come back. I promise it won’t be so long this time.”
Buck had watched the exchange with interest something about the doll picked at his memories. It dawned on him then and he nudged Ike and pointed to Lou.
Ike smiled as he looked at the two sisters saying good bye but shrugged his shoulders, as if to say, “So.”
“The doll,” Buck said quietly.
Ike looked again, and signed, “It’s not her. All girls have dolls.”
“Guess you’re right,” Buck agreed. “Still…”
Lou was never so glad to stop for the night, as she was when the boys finally agreed to make camp that night. Cody had been dogging her with questions all day. Jimmy was no better, he kept staring at her and when she went to look at him he’d look away. Kid, Buck and Ike were at least giving her some peace.
She dropped Lightning’s saddle as she sat down in front of the small fire Kid had made. She felt drained; the mental and physical exhaustion from the last few days had finally caught up to her. Cody though wasn’t ready to let her rest, “Why, Lou?” he asked.
“Why what, Cody?” she snapped back.
“Why pretend to be a boy? Why not just get a job takin’ care of some kids or cooking or takin’ care of a station like Emma does?” Cody asked.
“You name me one of those jobs that pays as much as ridin’ for the Express does and I’ll take it,” Lou replied fully awake now. She looked at the other riders that had joined them in front of the fire. “You can’t can you? The only jobs that pay as much as I make as a rider, I won’t do.”
“Besides, Cody,” Jimmy said trying to lighten the mood, “can you see Lou cooking? Remember what happened the one time he…er…she tried to help Emma with the cooking. Emma was cleaning potatoes out of the oven for a week. And we used her biscuits for target practice the next day.”
Everyone laughed at Jimmy recounting of that disaster one time she’d tried to help Emma cook, even Lou. The look on Cody’s face was even better, and had them laughing even more.
Lou waited for Cody’s next question, since she knew he wasn’t finished yet. Buck beat him to it though, “Where’d your sister get that doll she had?”
“Why?” Lou asked back.
“Just looked pretty fancy, is all,” he replied.
Lou’s eyes took on a far away look as she recalled how she got the doll. Kid noticed and said, “Tell us about it.”
“Well…we arrived at the orphanage shortly before Christmas. I was so scared of losing Miah and Tessa that I would hardly let them out of my sight so I didn’t get to know the other kids that well. I kind of kept to myself. About a week before Christmas rolled around some of the men and women in town that made contributions to the orphanage came by to hear us sing. I wasn’t too happy about it and didn’t want to do it, but the sisters made us. After we sung a few songs for them, they handed out presents to us. A set of clothes, most didn’t even fit, and a toy. The toys weren’t new of course; they were some that the kids in town didn’t want anymore.
“The dress I was given was a couple of sizes too big but that was better than some got. Some of the kids got clothes that had holes in them or were too small. The sisters told me not to worry about it that I would grow into the dress. Then I opened the gift that wrapped. She was the prettiest doll I had ever seen. She had on a long lacy white dress, and a small white bonnet. Her head and hands were made of china. I was so happy; I’d always wanted a doll like that. That was when I noticed that one of the legs was missing. I felt like crying. See I didn’t mind that the dress was dirty and that some of the lace had been torn in places but for it to be missing a leg; that really bothered me.
“It was like everything else then, broken with no hope of being fixed. I hugged her gently and headed back to the girls’ dorm. As I did I passed two boys sitting on the stairs. They smiled at me and one said, “Merry Christmas” to me but I didn’t pay him much attention. Some how though they figured out what was wrong.
“I found out later that they had played a mean trick on the banker’s daughter that had donated the doll. One of the boys had scared her away from her new doll while the other stole a leg and the shoes off of it. They then snuck into the girl’s dorm one night and took my doll out of my trunk. They convinced Sister Anna to sew the leg on and fix the dress on the doll. They told her they had worked and traded for the items. I don’t believe they really fooled her but she was so tender hearted that I think she understood they were only trying to be kind.
“She kept the doll until Christmas and to tell the truth I didn’t really miss it. Christmas Day while everyone else was in the chapel they snuck in and put the doll on my bed. When I returned from chapel I found her propped up on my pillow like she had always been there, like it was where she belonged. It took a little while but I found out that Bobby and Isaac had been the boys to get Sister Anna to fix my doll.
“When I left the orphanage I left the doll with Tessa so she’d know that I was going to come back someday,” Lou finished. She looked around at the boys waiting for the teasing to start; they all seemed lost in their own thoughts, though.
Later that night when she was sure everyone was finally asleep, Lou quietly left the camp. She needed to be by herself to figure out what she was going to do. She was sure at least one of the boys would tell Teaspoon she was a girl and she’d lose her job. Not to mention the memories that were starting to haunt her.
She found a big rock next to the creek they were camped by and climbed up on it to think. She lost herself in her thoughts and memories. She was so consumed by them that she didn’t even hear Buck approach until he called her name. He startled her so that she about fell off of the rock.
“Didn’t mean to scare you. Are you ok, Lou?” Buck asked.
“Sure, I’m fine. Just wanted to think a bit,” Lou replied as she started to head back to camp.
“I didn’t mean anything when I asked about the doll,” Buck started to explain. “It just brought back some memories of my own.”
“Oh?”
“Yeah, you know that Ike and I were at the same orphanage. Well, we had a friend there; she was a little bit of a thing. Her and her brother and sister arrived the winter after I did. I was still learning English at the time. See I didn’t know it when I first came to the orphanage and I couldn’t tell the Sisters my name. One of them decided to call me Robert after her brother that was a priest. She thought it would help to change me from my…how’d she put it…my heathen ways. Didn’t work though.
“Anyway, Ike and I did something nice for this girl and we all became good friends. We taught her to ride and she helped me with my English. She was pretty feisty, too. I remember this one fight Ike and I got into. The sisters were really angry about it, so she told them that the other boys were making some horrible suggestions toward her and we were defending her honor,” Buck smiled up at the stars as he remembered that day.
Lou looked at him perplexed at first then said, “Bobby?”
Buck continued with his story though, “We had a nickname for her too, we called her Magpie, cause once she got to know us she was always talking and telling us what to do. Her really name was Margaret Louise though,” he said as he looked down at her. Then a twinkle came into his dark brown eyes as he said, “How ya doin’ Magpie?”
Lou smiled up at Buck, the moonlight making the tears in her eyes sparkle. “Better now. Much better now,” she said as she wrapped her arms around him in a hug.
Ike watched from a distance as he had before. Even after all these years they were still the best of friends. He shook his head, cause if what he believe was true; Kid wasn’t going to be the only one chasing after Lou shortly.