“Then what did he look like?” Jeremiah asked, obviously not ready to give up with the simple answer he had just received.

“Well, he had brown hair like we do and he was pretty tall. I think he had brown eyes, but I can’t remember that well. I do know he liked to sing though. Every Christmas he would sing to all of us before we went to bed,” Lou told them, surprised at how quickly she could come up with a pack of lies. Of course, before she congratulated herself too much Jeremiah pointed out the obvious to her.

“That was Uncle Henry! Why aren’t you telling us the truth?” Jeremiah exclaimed incredibly angry at that point.

“I’m sorry. I just don’t remember. They both looked so much a like, sometimes I get them confused. You’re just going to have to take my word for it when I tell you he was a good man.”

Jeremiah grumbled a little, but could see he was getting nowhere with the direct route. Theresa had not expressed any interest in the conversation at all. She was too young to have known either of her parents very well, so there was nothing she could remember that she missed about either one. Jeremiah on the other hand could remember his mother being sick and not having a father around. He decided that changing the subject for now.

“How long will you be here?”

“Probably for a couple of weeks. It all depends on how busy things get at the weigh station. I don’t think I’ll have to leave early though. We can do whatever you two want to,” Lou told them hoping that she could at least keep that promise to them.

“Can we go see St. Louis?” Teresa asked perking up after the disappointment of not learning anything new about her father.

“That’s a pretty long trip Teresa, I don’t think you’d have a good a time going there. Besides, you’re too young for me to take you and Jeremiah all the way there and not expect any trouble to come from it. I can take you to St. Joe though. That’s a lot more interesting than St. Louis.”

“But Margaret Chaffer said that St. Louis was the biggest, brightest city she’d ever seen in her entire life,” Teresa complained stomping her foot on the floor.

“Well that’s probably because Margaret Chaffer has never been to St. Louis. There are all sorts of fancy places to eat and lots of shops in St. Joe. St. Louis is crowded and noisy because so many people think it’s a great new city. St. Joe is just as big, but without so many people. You’ll have more fun in St. Joe, I promise,” Lou said praying this would smooth over what seemed to have been a hundred bumps she’d had to fix in the short time she’d been at the orphanage. “Besides, you know you like to sleep in your own bed. If we went all the way to St. Louis we’d have to sleep outside on the ground. You wouldn’t like that very much.”

“I guess so,” Teresa muttered. Before she had a chance to think of a new way to get to St. Joe the dinner bell was rung.

“Dinner time!” Jeremiah cried running for the door and smiling for the first time since Lou had shown up earlier that day.

Dinner was a interesting experience for Lou. There was a time when she knew and could name every single child in the orphanage. That night as she looked around the room she realized that she knew only three or four of the older children and none of the younger ones. She also noticed that she did not even know any of the nuns there except for Sister Mary Catherine. It was pretty sad to Lou to wonder what had happened to all the friends she had once had at the orphanage. Most of them would have had to leave by the time they were fifteen or sixteen and could make their own way in the world.

Soon Jeremiah and Teresa would have to figure something out for themselves. Things weren’t looking to good for Lou bringing them home with her and she had no idea how to break it to them. That night as Lou tried to fall asleep she couldn’t help playing over what she had thought about at dinner. Just a few more years was all that was left for Jeremiah. Lou was a relative living on her own, she might be expected to take Teresa and Jeremiah herself someday soon, rather than have the sisters watch them.

This brought on the same concerns about arrangements that she had wondered about on her way there. No solution seemed to fit and Lou was up the entire night trying to calm her fears. Since sleep was nowhere to be found she got up at dawn and began walking around the orphanage grounds remembering old times. There was very little that she could fondly look back on about life there, but there were certain moments that made things a little better than they had been. One of her favorite memories was of sitting underneath a large tree and reading from a storybook she had found in an old trunk. Usually she would read alone, but there were times she would try to teach other children to read or simply read aloud to them for entertainment.

“What are you doing out here? Your breakfast is getting cold,” a voice from behind said.

“Sister Mary Catherine! You scared me!” Lou cried as she spun around. “I’m sorry, but your brother and sister were asking where you were. They were worried you’d had to leave in the night.”

“Oh! I was afraid something like this would happen. How can I keep doing this?” Lou groaned.

“I understand it’s not easy for you, Louise, but Teresa and Jeremiah are simply too young to understand why you can’t stay with them all the time.”

“I know Sister, I’ve been trying to think of a way to bring them home with me now, but nothing seems to work out. If I had some more money, then maybe I could afford a place of my own.”

“Couldn’t they simply stay in Emma’s house? From the way your friends talked about her the last time you were here she seems like she’d welcome them.”

“Actually, Emma and the Marshall, Sam Cain, got married last year and moved away. But Rachel would let them stay just the same. The problem is that a weigh station isn’t somewhere you want little children running around. I’d want to have in a place of our own, where I could watch them myself, but I can’t get enough money together to do it.”

“Well, Louise, you know the other sisters and I would like to help you, but we can barely keep this place together with the money we do have.”

“I know that Sister. I wasn’t asking for help, I just needed to talk to someone else about this. I don’t Jeremiah and Teresa to think that I don’t want them around, but I can’t just tell them I can’t afford to have them around. One of these days things will get better,” Lou sighed as she headed back to the orphanage to eat breakfast.

All the children around the breakfast table were as noisy as they could be, as children always are. Lou breathed a sigh of relief when she noticed that her brother and sister were just as loud as the other children. It made her feel less worried about the impact the previous afternoon’s argument. Maybe they’d already forgotten their anger over her not remembering their father immediately and not being able to go to St. Louis.

Lou had managed to at least come up with a way around their father. Since she was not going to tell them the truth she had found another person to tell them about. Teaspoon was the perfect “father figure” for them. Lucky for Lou Teaspoon had never met her brother and sister and they did not know too much about him. Some nice stories about Teaspoon here and there would give them something to hold onto. If they ever did meet him, they probably wouldn’t realize that he was the man from the stories.

“One problem solved,” Lou told herself as she ate her flap jacks at the breakfast table, “Two more to go. St. Joe won’t be too disappointing to Teresa, so that takes care of that. I can’t think anymore about taking them with me, I’ll leave that alone for a couple days so I can actually enjoy myself. Then there’s figuring out what to do about the Kid.”

Lou rolled her eyes to herself at the thought of having to deal with the Kid again eventually. She was still too angry to even think about forgiving him, but something had to change and she had to think of what before she got home.

“What are you making faces for?” Jeremiah asked from across the table.

“What? I wasn’t. Nevermind, eat your breakfast,” Lou told him annoyed that he had caught her at the wrong moment.

“You can’t tell me what to do.”

“Here we go,” Lou thought to herself, “Fine. Don’t eat. I’m not the one who’s going to be hungry this afternoon.”

Jeremiah just followed his arms across his chest and smirked. He knew that it bothered his sister that he was being difficult, but he figured she deserved it. She hadn’t been around for so long that she didn’t have the right to act like a parent to him. He had won this battle and was planning on winning the next few.

Breakfast ended soon after the little encounter between Jeremiah and Lou. There was so much noise coming from everyone else that the fact they were ignoring each other went largely unnoticed. Theresa hadn’t even heard the exchange since she was so busy eating the pancakes Jeremiah had put on her plate suddenly.

“What are we going to do taoday, Louise?” Theresa asked as soon as everyone was excused from the breakfast table.

“I don’t know. How would you like to go see Saint Jo today?”

“Yes!! Let’s get going!” Theresa exclaimed jumping up and down.

“What about you Jeremiah? Do you want to go?”

“Yeah, sure, if you’re going,” he muttered.

“Go get a bag and put some clothes in it. I talked to Sister Mary last night and she said that we can spend a few days there if you want to.”

“You mean we can stay in a hotel?”

“Yup. And we go see everything that’s there. It’ll be fun, won’t it Jeremiah?”

“Yeah, sounds like fun,” he said showing some form of enthusiasm for the first time since the night before.

“Thank God,” Lou thought, “He’s finally going to stop punishing for not remembering our father last night, I hope.”

A few minutes later Theresa and Jeremiah were running down the stairs with a small bag held by Jeremiah and a doll by Theresa. They set off immediately for Saint Jo and the trip itself actually went well. Jeremiah had remembered his anger from the night before and spent most of the trip silent. Lou and Theresa ignored him though, and enjoyed themselves without him. Theresa kept asking questions about why the land looked the way it did and what a big city was going to be like. As the questions progressed Jeremiah would sneak in one or two of his own, usually by whispering it to Theresa. Lou didn’t care though, as long as he was talking to someone and interested in what was going on that was all that mattered to her.

Back home that morning though, things were going just about as well for Kid as for Lou. The night before he had driven everyone crazy pacing back and forth waiting for the replacement to show up. He knew as well as anyone that he wasn’t due until that afternoon at the earliest, but that didn’t stop him. The plans about what he would say and how things would go once he got Lou to listen to him were already evolving. Kid knew that Lou would eventually forgive him, if he just waited long enough, she usually did.

“Teaspoon, didn’t you say that replacement was going to be here this afternoon?” Kid asked getting up to look out the window for the third time in ten minutes.

“Kid, would you calm down? He’ll be here soon. Besides, I ain’t said you could leave yet. We need to see how good he is. Anyway, you can’t ride out at night, you’ll get lost before you’re two miles away. You’re just going to have to wait until tomorrow morning, that’s all there is to it. It’s for your own good, you go after her this fast while she’s still mad at you and all you’re going to do is make things worse than they already are.”

“Well, can’t you help me, Teaspoon? There’s got to be some kind of advice or some story you could tell me about one of your wives, isn’t there?”

“Well, to be perfectly honest with you, Kid, I ain’t never done something that stupid before.”

“Thanks a lot, Teaspoon.”

“I don’t mean it like that. You just got to make up your mind about Louise, that’s all.”

“What do you mean “make up my mind”? I’ve made up my mind! I love Lou, I just messed up.”

“Then you’d better wait until she gets home and tell her that. Let her cool off and see her brother and sister, everything will be fine once she’s home. You two always work things out,” Teaspoon said patting Kid on the shoulder.

“I hope so,” Kid muttered.

To be continued...

Be sure to send some feedback!

Campfire Tales Way Station

Tales of the West Saddlin' Station