The Substitute Suitor

Kid arrived not too long after with Doc Barnes. Having examined Lou's head injury and cleaned and bandaged her shoulder wound, Doc Barnes informed the other riders that she would be just fine after several days of rest.

The riders were all relieved to hear this, but they were still extremely worried about Lou. She was so depressed over what happened with Caroline that she wouldn't speak. The only thing they managed to get out of her was the story of how she was shot and knocked unconscious in the first place.

Lou told them how a bunch of drunken drifters ambushed her with the hopes that she was carrying something important like bank drafts or treasury bonds. They'd opened the pouch while holding Lou at gunpoint and then threw it back to her disgusted when they realized it only contained letters and ordinary mail. But they decided they'd have to kill Lou because she could identify them. She managed to slip away and tried to outrun them but they shot her, the impact of the bullet forceful enough to cause Lou to tumble from her horse and hit her head on the hard ground below. The men must have thought she was dead and left her. Then Buck showed up.

But Lou could not even think about herself and her own well being when she knew that Caroline was so upset with her. She's right, Lou thought. She has every right to be mad at me for the way I tricked her. I pretended to be her friend, not knowing that I actually would want to become her friend. I made her feel a fool.

As much as her fellow riders, who all had become fully aware of the situation by now, tried to comfort and console Lou, she would have none of it. She began to withdraw further and further within herself for the next few days while she was mending. Everyone was extremely concerned for her, especially Emma and Teaspoon who still did not know the full story behind Lou's sudden depression. The boys tried to convince Teaspoon and Emma that Lou was just upset about what happened when she was attacked on her run. They wouldn't betray her further by revealing her secret identity.

Caroline did not make any visits to the way station after that day when she found out that Lou, the person she thought she had such deep feelings for, was really a woman. Along with Lou, Cody was also not his usual jaunty self, making the bunkhouse an extremely dismal and downcast atmosphere.

Cody knew he had created a big mess for himself, and more importantly, for Lou and Caroline. It wasn't fair that Caroline hated Lou, he thought. She had every right in the world to hate him, though. Cody felt that he had to make amends somehow. He had to make things right…if not for Caroline, for Lou.

Despite Lou's apparent lack of will, she mended relatively quickly. Within a week after the date of the attack, Lou was able to ride and carry her full weight around the Sweetwater express station. She remained quiet and emotionless, however, and the riders grew more and more concerned for her mental state.

Lou was raking hay in the barn late that morning when she heard someone come up from behind. She didn't turn around though, thinking it was just Jimmy or Kid or one of the other boys there to tell her how worried they were for her, and she certainly was not in the mood to hear any of that. It wasn't until she heard a voice, a woman's voice, that she turned around to face the visitor.

"Hello, Lou," Caroline spoke. Much to Lou's surprise, the words she heard were not filled with hate or anger.

"Hi, Caroline," Lou replied timidly and cautiously.

"I came here to talk to you," Caroline began gently. "Do you mind?"

"No, of course not. Actually, I'm glad you did," Lou replied as she breathed a sigh of relief.

Lou took a seat on the bale of hay and signaled for Caroline join her.

The two were totally silent for a few minutes, as neither really knew what to say, where to begin.

Then, Lou moved her lips to speak. "Caroline, I know it probably don't count for much, but I…"

"Lou," Caroline cut her off and raised her hand up in the air to silence Lou. Lou complied and let Caroline have her say. It was the very least she could do after all that's happened. "I came here today to tell you that I'm sorry for the way I reacted when I found out that you were really a woman."

"Oh, no, Caroline," Lou shook her head. "You have no reason to apologize to me. It's me who should say I'm sorry. And I am…I am so sorry."

"I realize that you must have your own reasons for dressing this way and pretending to be a boy. And you were just trying to be a good friend to Cody when you agreed to go to dinner with me that night. I know that now," Caroline acknowledged.

Lou could tell that there was no hint of malice or loathing in Caroline's words and was extremely grateful. She admired the young woman so much for being able to come out of this whole catastrophe with an even temper and an open heart.

"I never wanted things to end up the way they did…and neither did Cody. You have to believe that."

Caroline could sense the pleading in Lou's dark brown eyes, which were now beginning to well up with tears.

"I do, Lou," Caroline nodded assuredly. "I realize now that you'd been trying to tell me all along that you didn't feel the way I did…the way I thought I did when I thought you were a man. But I wouldn't let myself believe it. In some ways, I'm as much to blame as you."

"That's not true, Caroline," Lou stated. "It could never be your fault. I tried to make you think that I didn't like you. I tried to get you to like Cody instead." She paused for moment before continuing with her confession. "But the truth is, I had a wonderful time talkin' with you that night. It was the first time in such a long time that I'd been able to talk to another woman like that. I felt like we were friends, and I wanted so much for us to be. I still do. But I ended up leadin' you on, and that wasn't fair of me."

Caroline only nodded, removing her focus from Lou's eyes for a moment.

"Well, I'm still the same person I was before, only now I can only be your friend and nothin' more. That is, if you'd have me for a friend," Lou requested, the honesty and sincerity apparent in her voice and eyes.

"I want us to be friends, too, Lou," Caroline admitted, her face fully showing the deep sympathy she felt for Lou. She understood how the guilt must have been eating away at Lou all this time.

Lou managed to crack a smile through her trembling facial muscles and tear-streaked cheeks. Caroline returned the smile, her eyes full of sympathy and compassion, and held her hand out to Lou. Lou accepted it gratefully.

"I guess I should have realized that you weren't a boy by the way talking to you came so easy and natural," Caroline remarked. "It was an easiness I think I could only have with another woman…with a friend."

The two women shared an understanding smile, and Lou felt as if the weight of the world had been lifted from her shoulders.

Lou had hoped with all of her heart and soul that Caroline would be able to forgive her, but Lou never dreamed or imagined that after everything that had happened that she would not only gain the absolution she so desperately needed, but that she would also gain a friend.

A few weeks went by, and both Lou and Cody were once again themselves. Caroline had forgiven Cody as well and soon became a frequent and welcome visitor to the Sweetwater Pony Express station. Though his conscience mended faster than his heart, Cody had soon resigned himself to simply being Caroline's friend. She reassured him that one day, the right woman would come along and that she would consider this woman to be very lucky indeed.

Caroline and Lou grew very close in that time, though, to some degree, their friendship had to be kept a secret so that Teaspoon, Emma, and the rest of the townspeople did not discover Lou's real identity. Looking back on the whole experience, Lou would never have guessed that her role as a substitute suitor would lead her to a true friend. Thus, the closeness and camaraderie that she and Caroline felt for each other made it extremely difficult when Caroline informed Lou and the rest of the riders that she would soon be leaving Sweetwater.

Caroline explained that in the short time she was in Sweetwater, she had managed to receive a package of letters from her estranged older brother. They were letters that he had apparently written over the course of several years in reply to Caroline's own letters…letters she thought had just gone unanswered. But as it would turn out, her brother, Stanley, though he had been moving around from place to place and only received her first few letters at the last address that Caroline knew, had been writing faithfully to his younger sister while she was still in Boston.

Apparently, when Stanley severed his ties with his father, he was also forced to be cut off from the rest of the family as well. When she received the package of past-dated letters, Caroline learned that her father had purposely kept the letters from her, hoping that she would come to share in his anger with Stanley. But she did not. And after her parents died and Caroline left to stay with her aunt, she did not receive any letters for those few months because Stanley was in the process of moving out further west.

After her aunt had died, Caroline had gone back to the house where she had lived with her parents in Boston and left some instructions with the people who took over the new ownership. She always kept hope that maybe her older brother Stanley might come back one day looking for her. She told the owners to tell her brother what had happened to their parents and that she would be moving out west, to a little town called Sweetwater.

The bundle of unopened letters was found by the new owners hidden in the attic shortly after Caroline had started her journey out west. They sent them to her, and by the miracle of the United States postal service, the letters were received.

Caroline read through all of the letters, following her brother's life for the past five years that he was absent. Somehow, it made the gap that had existed in her heart since Stanley's departure complete, and the sense of kinship and family that she felt she'd lost when her parents died quickly returned. In the most recent letters, Stanley asked Caroline to join him in California, where he had made a new home with his wife and two young daughters.

Caroline was so overjoyed at the thought of being reunited with her long lost brother that she decided she would have to leave Sweetwater and the new friends she had come to know there. It was not an easy decision in the least, but the thought of being with family again was just so overwhelming and overpowering that she could not turn her back on it.

And so, Caroline would leave Sweetwater. She would leave Cody and Jimmy and all the others whom she had grown so fond of. She would leave Lou, but the friendship and bond that they shared would remain intact in their memories and hearts…always.